


With Me

by Try2CatchMe



Series: Sanctuary 'verse [25]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, M/M, Mild Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-17
Updated: 2013-01-17
Packaged: 2017-11-25 20:15:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/642557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Try2CatchMe/pseuds/Try2CatchMe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Some distant part of his brain knew he was on the floor in the empty house full of dead demons and a very bloody ex-fry cook, but he could only writhe and pray this ended soon."</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Me

**Author's Note:**

> I can't after that episode. I can't cope. Here, have a Sanctuary 'verse.

It felt like an eternity.

He was bombarded by memory after memory, layers and layers of pain and torment, red and fire, the darkest depths and the brightest whites, all of them hurting.

He couldn't breathe, but he could also never die, it just kept going on and on.

Some distant part of his brain knew he was on the floor in the empty house full of dead demons and a very bloody ex-fry cook, but he could only writhe and pray this ended soon.

Then his hand landed on something cool and metallic and everything dropped away.

He blinked and kept seeing the red and the fire and the horrible things that moved beyond the cage, but he could breathe and he didn't _hurt_ anymore.

The sword hilt lay under his hand, glinting in the fluorescent light. It wasn't on fire anymore, but it was warm to the touch.

It also felt like Michael.

He scooped it up and got to his feet. It was like he was in some sort of nightmare-horror version of the torture room. Alfie looked relatively the same, but he looked like something out of a horror movie anyway.

"Alfie," Adam leaned over the table, ignoring the maggots that were now wriggling on all the corpses in the room. He tapped his fellow vessel's face until he got a groan of complaint.

"Adam?"

Okay, good, he was awake.

"We gotta go," having a sword handy made it very easy to cut through the straps binding Alfie to the table. Sure, he could have just unbuckled them, but sword.

"That's easy for you to say," Alfie managed to get out in hissed breaths, "Your legs work."

"Yeah, but my eyes don't, so you're going to have to do that job for me."

"Oh fuck, you're not blind?"

"No, I'm hallucinating."

"What?"

"Welcome to the life. You won't get used to it. Up and at 'em," Adam wrapped his free arm around Alfie's waist and pulled, forcing the vessel to slump against him and let his feet fall to the floor. He steadfastly ignored all the threats Alfie made to certain parts of his anatomy.

"C'mon, you have to tell me if there's something coming at us." Because Adam was seeing hellhounds and demons everywhere and he could only hope they weren't real.

Alfie looped one arm around Adam's shoulder's and _clung_ , doing his best to stay upright, "You're clear."

It was a long, long way back to the car. They moved at a snail's pace just so Alfie could keep up and Adam couldn't help but flinch every few seconds. Before long, Adam was just as covered in Alfie's blood as Alfie was and the first thing that happened when they got to the truck and Adam dumped his fellow vessel in the passenger seat was that he dug through the glove box for the emergency blanket he had stashed away in there.

He covered Alfie with the blanket and buckled him in, shutting his door firmly. Then he looked down at the sword in his hand.

He couldn't drive with it. He needed it gone, but he didn't want to risk falling back into his head by putting it down.

And then, just like that, his hand was empty. He was still sane, but the sword was gone.

No, no not gone. Just... not there anymore. He still _felt_ it... he just wasn't holding it.

That made no sense and this wasn't the time to look a gift horse in the mouth. He ran around to the driver's side door and jumped in, turning the engine and cranking up the heat.

"Are you even good to drive?" Alfie asked, through chattering teeth.

"Yeah," The nightmare-horror version of reality had started to fade to something Adam actually recognized, the two seemed to be overlapped at the moment, but he could see enough to tell what was real. "I'm good."

Alfie made a disbelieving noise, but it didn't sound like his heart was in it. Adam glanced over and saw his eyes drooping and reached over to nudge him.

"Hey, no, you can't go to sleep on me."

"I don't really have a whole lot of choice," Alfie mumbled into his shoulder. The blood loss was clearly getting to him. Adam had to make him focus, keep him awake and aware, so he just said the first thing that came to his mind.

"So why did you stay?"

"... What?"

Adam pulled onto the highway and floored it, keeping his eyes peeled for lodging signs, "You told me to ask you why you stayed with Samandriel again when you liked me better. I just stormed a demon stronghold to save your ass, so tell me."

For a long moment, Alfie was silent and Adam was afraid he'd passed out after all, but then he quietly answered.

"It's because being a vessel was as close as I could get to another person. I... when I was little, I had a brother. Matt. We were twins. You can't get closer than that. Having a twin is like... like having a built-in best friend."

Oh God, Alfie had a twin? Emphasis on _had_?

"What happened?"

"Our parents got divorced. I think we were five, maybe six. Dad took me, Mom took him. It was a messy split, they never wanted to see each other again, I think Mom remarried straight away, she may have even been cheating on Dad. Matt and I never even got to talk on the phone. When I was ten, I was already planning to run away as soon as I could get enough money for the bus. Dad told me on Easter. There was a car accident. Matt and Mom, both gone. Just like that. He wouldn't even let me go to the funeral."

Alfie was crying now, the words pouring out like they'd been building for years and he'd never had a single soul to release them to, "I only remember what it was like to have someone so close like that. I never even got to know my brother, what kind of person he would have been, what kind of person he'd make me and I'd make him. With Samandriel it... it was the closest thing I'd ever had since. Not the same, not anywhere near close enough... but I couldn't let it go once I had it."

Adam was regretting asking more than anything, but Alfie was still awake, so he just reached over and rested a hand on the back of his neck, giving a gentle firm squeeze and not letting go as the other vessel cried softly into the seatbelt.

The sign for the motel came up half a mile later. Adam didn't have time to change, just parked and shucked off his outer shirt and ran in in his black t-shirt. The motel manager didn't even bat an eye at the suspicious splotches, just ran one of the fake cards he'd taken from Garth, handed him a key, and went back to his crossword.

Fortunately, their room was on the corner of the furthest building from the road. Unfortunately, Alfie was barely conscious and Adam couldn't even get him on his feet. He unlocked the door, propped it open, and carried the bloodied vessel inside the room.

He put him on the nearest bed, cranked the heater up, and finally turned to survey the damage.

No way could he do this. Alfie needed stitches, a shit ton of stitches. And a blood transfusion, probably. But Adam couldn't take him to a hospital, not since the people who had taken him had been EMTS, demons could be anywhere.

So he swallowed his pride for the second time that night and pulled out his phone.

He didn't call either of his brothers. Instead, he called the first name in his contact list.

When the other end of the connection was picked up, he didn't get a hello. But then, he hadn't been expecting one.

"The Lodge motel an hour from Windom, just off the highway, room 16."

There was a flutter and there were three people in the room.

"What happened?" It was less of a question and more of a demand. Castiel strode over to where Alfie lay on the bed, laying a hand on his forehead, "Where is Samandriel?"

"There were demons, they took him, can you heal him?" Adam asked, ignoring the second question in favor of stopping the bleeding.

"Yes." Castiel lifted his other hand, placing it over Alfie's heart. Both hands started to glow.

It wasn't instantaneous, like his own experience with angelic healing. Adam actually watched the wounds knit together, heard the sickening crack when Alfie's shoulder popped back into place.

There was something wrong here. Castiel wasn't at full power.

"Where is Samandriel?"

"I don't know. He just vanished and then the demons took Alfie."

Castiel nodded, though, concentrating on healing Alfie.

To keep busy, Adam went to his duffel, got out a canister of salt, and started laying lines. Then he took out the two changes of clothes he'd packed, set one aside, and went to the bathroom to wet a cloth.

By the time he got out, Castiel was finished.

"How did you get him back from the demons?"

"Tapped into a little leftover juice from Michael. It worked, but not well." Adam carefully peeled the shredded, bloody shirt from Alfie's skin, tossing it to the side to burn later. He cleaned the leftover blood off the unconscious vessel's face and torso, then repeated the process with his jeans and legs.

A flannel shirt was sacrificed to the cause of keeping Alfie from freezing to death in the night. Adam set his spare jeans on the night table, then took the second change of clothes with him into the bathroom.

He held it together long enough to shower. The water rushed down the drain red, then pink, then soapy, then finally clear.

Then he tugged on sweatpants, caught a glimpse of himself in the shower, and sat down hard on the edge of the tub.

The handprints on his skin stood out starkly, a clear reminder of who put them there.

He put his head in his hands. This wasn't supposed to happen. Things had been good. Things had been _great_.

Then the stupid fucking angels and their damn information and Samandriel's _stupid_ protective instinct.

What was he going to do now? What the hell now?

"Adam."

" _Holy shit!_ " Adam nearly fell backwards into the tub. Castiel was standing in front of him, looking concerned. "Do you not know about _knocking!?_ "

Castiel considered him for a moment before apparently deciding the question was rhetorical, "You must calm down, you're going into shock."

"What, no I'm not."

But then the angel reached out and gripped his hand and Adam realized how cold he was and how much he was shaking and-

And then he was sitting on the bed in the other room, the same one Alfie was in, even though there was a perfectly good other one. Castiel handed him his shirt. Now that he was aware how badly he was shivering, Adam couldn't shrug the shirt on fact enough.

"You need to rest. Close proximity will help to regulate your body temperatures."

Why did the universe always conspire for bed-sharing?

Adam agreed on the whole 'body temperature thing', so he got under the covers, "But I can't sleep while Alfie-"

"I'll watch over you."

And, yeah, Castiel was really intense, but he was also really sincere. And Adam just really wanted respite for a few hours.

He didn't want to be that vulnerable, let Alfie be that vulnerable, but he didn't know how much longer he could hold it together either way.

Finally, he flopped back onto the crappy pillows, pulled the crappy covers up over his shoulders, and asked Castiel to hit the lights.

And in the darkness, if he pulled Alfie close so no one could secret him away while he slept, only Castiel would know. And he'd probably think it was normal.


End file.
